Christine de Pizan was a court writer in France in the early 1400s. As a response to the general sexism and misogyny she faced, she wrote The Book of the City of Ladies. The book builds an allegorical city of examples of famous women from history as an example of what women can accomplish and a beacon to future women. The dramatization does a nice job of showing de Pizan as a character with three virtues coming to her in a dream and walking her through building the city. The whole thing is just a few stories of famous women organized by things like strength, courage, family, etc. It was an enjoyable hour or so to listen but I don't feel a need to read the book. It is one of those where knowing it exists and the basics of it is more important than actually reading it.

This was fun but also clearly went over my head for a large chunk of it. The idea here is that a Scottish WWI soldier goes to England after the war where he works as a journalist and then writes a foreigners guide to the English. This dramatization was very good and I enjoyed some of the looks at the English from an outsider point of view (especially the trip to the League of Nations). My problem was that there is a huge scene set at a cricket match. I don't know how to play cricket so I couldn't follow it all that well. I got some of the joke, but I missed a lot as well.

This two-part adaptation was OK but not brilliant. I've never read The Aeneid, but I know the basics of the story. The first half of this adaptation was kind of slow but the second half was a bit better and more fun. I guess that's just because the first half dealt mostly with the love story while the second was the trip to the Underworld and some battles that were much better.

As I mentioned in the intro, this is 30 minutes of bloopers, outtakes, etc. that you get if you buy Neverwhere. There are three main things here: various actors stumbling over their lines, which is OK but not great; various actors changing their lines, delivery, etc. on purpose to crack up their colleagues, which is FANTASTIC; and extended versions of scenes in the aired versions or brief scenes cut completely from the aired version, which were good and included the climactic scene with the missing line that drove me crazy when it wasn't in the aired version (see here for details).

Rather than listening to this while working out or similar, I played it as background noise while piddling on my computer. That worked much better for me as I'd pick up great individual lines here and there without worrying about getting everything. I'm sure there were lots of things I missed, but the other way there's just not enough there to hold my attention.

Comedy Panel Shows

I listened to Night Vale and the Neverwhere outtakes when I'd usually listen to Panel Shows so none of those this week.

In Writing the Century 21, the BBC basically does dramatizations from diaries, letters, and other sources of stories of listeners and their families at key moments in the 21st century. It isn't supposed to be famous stories, just normal people. I've listened to one or two and they are usually OK. This one is based on a 1930s milliner's diaries and in addition to the omnibus will be the 15-minute drama this week.

I love Wodehouse's Jeeves stories, but I haven't read any of his other stuff. This is a dramatization of a Blandings story. The only thing I know about the Blandings storylines is that there is an Earl who is obsessed with his pig, Empress.

A rare, for me, non-fiction / documentary kind of program. This one is Hugh Laurie (in case you didn't figure that out from the title) going through the history of Blues music. I love Blues. I love Hugh Laurie. Hooray!

Dramatization of the Dorothy Sayers detective novel. I have several Wimsey radio dramatizations, but I'm pretty sure I've not yet listened to any of them. I've heard good things and really should get around to listening to them.

This is an old 1980s sitcom about a British embassy in an unnamed Soviet satellite country. I've got all the other series and have listened to series 1 and really enjoyed it. There are also several other sitcoms that I enjoy starting repeat airings this week such as Revolting People Series 3 and In the End but I have them all.

Comments:

I started with the last Inspector Morse-dramatication: The Wench is Dead...but while I love the story it just doesn't make a good radio-play. Morse is alone a lot of the time, so in the play he's talking to himself a lot (and at one point talking to a ghost which is just weird)...there's also too much random Wagner-background music for my taste...

Apart from that I listened to some News Quiz-ish Panel shows: Bremners One Question Quiz and Armando Ianucci's Charm offensive (the latter is a repeat from a few years back, Bremner's show seems to be a new one) and both were...OK. I like Rory Bremner in general but the show just jumped back and forth between being a Comedy show and trying to discuss the topics more seriously. Sometimes that went well, sometimes it's just a bit meh...and Charm Offensive is like most panel-shows rising and falling depending on the guests